Four-year-old Nate seems to have developed a real panache for the dramatic. I’m not sure exactly where it came from… possibly too many cartoons, or too many Legos, or too many Lego cartoons. He seems to fancy himself some sort of Lego man. Things will happen to him and he will come to me completely distraught saying things like:
“Mommy, he wipped by arm off. He wipped it wight off.” Wipped being ripped, and he being you know who.
I had a very hard time maintaining my seriously concerned expression when he came running into the living room in tears: “He cachinged my head off. He cachinged it wight off.” With a knife-like motion to his neck.
And then a couple of days ago something happened and…”Mommy, my head popped off. It almost popped wight off.”
This morning it was, “Mommy, he laid on top of me and almost flattened me.” “What? Like a Nate pancake?” Earnest nodding.
The poor kid is practically ripped limb-from-limb on a weekly basis.
This evening I’m in the kitchen and I say to James offhand, “Man, something blew into my eye today and it still hurts.”
And no joke he says, “Oh really, Nate” in this totally inappropriately sarcastic tone. I mean really, it’s not like I exclaimed in a fit of unjust tears, “James, James. My eye popped out at the store today. Popped. Wight. Out.”
Sheesh. I wish I’d told Nate. He would understand.